Alma Boudreau was a Trustee of the Cambridge Public Library for over 50 years. She began her tenure in 1938. The Boudreau Branch is named in her honor.
Those of us of a certain age remember all too well the card catalog. Thanks to digitization and online catalogs, the card catalog has become obsolete.
The Cambridge Room just finished digitizing its newspaper subject and obituary cards. They have been added to the historic Cambridge newspaper database, found here: http://cambridge.dlconsulting.com/. There are over 50,000 cards, covering the years 1950 to 2008.
Because we can’t digitize and make available newspapers that were published after 1922, we have made available the subject cards. You will still have to come to the library to look up any article you find in the subject cards. However, this addition to the newspaper database will save you enormous amounts of time.
Search Tips
1. When you’re searching for an obituary (and you know it falls in the 1950-2008 time period), you can narrow the results on the left hand side of the search results page, under “category” by clicking on “card.” Try searching by last name, like here.
2. You can also search by full name without quotation marks, like here.
3. Search by name and year (if you know it), like here.
4. Search by subjects, like “Area IV” or “Area Four.” Use quotation marks.
Is there any possibility of putting things other than newspapers on the site, like magazines, pamphlets… They are just as fragile and would benefit from not being handled. Great site!
Since we don’t own copyright to the Cambridge newspapers and magazines, we can’t digitize and make available anything that was originally published after 1922. We hope to digitize as much as we are legally allowed to and build an amazing online resource for researchers around the world. The newspapers and subject cards are our first step in the process.
Wow! What is the article about? It has such a fabulous title…